In Words for Things Left Unsaid, Corie Rosen combines clean, direct language with fresh, intricate imagery to offer insights into the complex contradiction of her title. In this striking debut, she pores over detailed memories, fearlessly plunging us into the heightened emotional landscape of a failed relationship without resorting to easy melodrama or irony. This book is one of the most powerful thematic collections I have read in a long time.Jim Daniels, author of Birth Mark s and Show and Tell, winner of the Independent Publisher Award for Poetry
With Words for Things Left Unsaid, Corie Rosen does not merely offer words. Reflection, tenderness, and studied longing braid the chords of these poems; Rosen's generosity is a lucid love for the self, beloveds, and the natural world. While it may be true that "Nothing is said between / the arms of two people / trying to reach one another," Rosen's capture of this quiet moment reveals the nuances of verbal and nonverbal communication, hindsight, and the truth about connection: that we need each other.
Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Ghost Of and National Book Award finalist
Amid these poems about the agony and perplexing conundrums of love, one finds a line that hits the gut: "' "violence" was just another word for love.'" These are poems that don't leave the house. The sofa, the kitchen, and the bed become witnesses to estrangement. Corie Rosen is not afraid to show hurt, and she succeeds brilliantly in telling us about the essential part of the human journey.
Like a basketball coach who throws a rookie in against MVPs, I included one of Ms. Rosen's poems in with an anthology that included some of the best poets of the last hundred years in my anthology, "From Totems to Hip-Hop." Her poem, "Madonna for the Damned-a 1980's Heroine," was so outstanding it was broadcast on Voice of America. Now the talent is wedded to experience. The result is one of the best American poets writing today.
Ishmael Reed, author of Conjugating Hindi, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize nominee
